Archaeology professor receives Canada's highest academic accolade

Dr. Priscilla Renouf will be officially inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in November.

By Janet Harron

The Royal Society of Canada (RSC) has named Dr. Priscilla Renouf, a professor in the Faculty of Arts’ Department of Archaeology, a new fellow in the English Division of Social Sciences within the RSC.

Election to the society is considered the highest academic honour in Canada.“I am very pleased to have been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, which is a great honour. I am pleased to be recognized for my many years of archaeological research in Newfoundland and to join the ranks of those distinguished Memorial faculty who are already Fellows,” said Dr. Renouf.

Dr. Renouf is the Canada Research Chair in North Atlantic Archaeology. She was cited by the society for her interest in 6,000 years of coastal settlement on Newfoundland’s north west coast and for communicating her findings to a general audience through books, videos and exhibitions.

The RSC elects members from all branches of learning who have achieved national and international recognition by publishing learned works or original research in the arts, humanities and sciences. Founded in 1882, the country’s oldest scholarly organization currently has about 1,800 fellows.

The RSC undertakes a wide range of activities to promote learning and research in the arts and sciences. It also organizes international exchanges and visiting scholar programs with similar national academies, and promotes Canadian participation in projects and conferences around the globe.

Dr. Renouf will be inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s ranks at a ceremony on Nov. 26 in Ottawa.